Son reportedly murders abusive mother obsessed with SNU admission

Posted on : 2011-11-25 10:45 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
Experts say the gruesome murder is indicative of extreme pathologies related to education and competition among South Koreans

By Kim Ji-hoon 
 
A high school senior and honors student was arrested Thursday for slaying the mother who insisted that he gain admission to Seoul National University (SNU). The son left the body in place for eight months before taking the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) as scheduled.
The circumstances of the case are as follows, based on accounts from police, friends of the student, and neighbors.
The mother, identified by the surname Park, pasted a large paper sign in the living room reading “Seoul National University.” There was one thing she wanted from her high school senior son: gaining admission to SNU with a first-place score for his school. The mother liked to play piano and was described as intense and a perfectionist.
The 18-year-old son, identified by the surname Ji, had been forging all of his report cards since the 9th grade on a color printer to show to his mother. A student at a high school in Seoul’s Gwangjin District, he had placed in the top three for his class during the 10th and 11th grades. But in his senior year, his grades fell, leaving him on the outer reaches of the top ten for his class.
Beatings were a regular occurrence. Blaming the poor performance on a lack of will from her son, the mother would deny him meals and prevent him from sleeping. There were some days when he put her on the back of his green bike to go out to eat together, or when she played the piano for him. But there were far more days when she was yelling at him. Park had separated five years before from her husband, 52.
At 10 p.m. on the night of March 12, the mother began another tirade at her son. She was unsatisfied even with the doctored score card that had him ranked 62nd in the country. The son reported that his mother forced him to turn over while she beat his buttocks viciously with a baseball bat and golf club. It was 8 a.m. the next day when she let him go. Tired from spending the whole night nagging her son, the mother went to sleep in the main room.
At 11 a.m., the son picked up a kitchen knife and went into the room where she was sleeping. He left the weapon beside her corpse and headed straight out of the room. He would tell police, “There was a general meeting of student parents on March 14, and I killed her because I was worried she would find out about the doctored grades when she went to the school and the beatings would get worse.”
After killing his mother, Ji did not go to school for three days. His homeroom teacher called, but he did not answer. The teacher visited the house but was unable to meet with Ji because the door was locked. Three days later, Ji turned up again a school.
He survived with the 1.5 million won ($1,295) his father sent his mother every month. He began bringing over friends that had never been able to visit when his mother was there. He told his friends that his mother had left. Meanwhile, in a main room with its cracks sealed up with industrial bond, maggots were crawling over the desiccating body.
But when his friends left and night fell, he was seized with fear. His mother appeared in his dreams. He would wake from his nightmares and consider taking his own life as well.
On the afternoon of Nov. 22, eight months after Ji killed his mother, there was an unexpected ring on the doorbell. Ji’s father was there, wishing to see the son who had worked so hard taking the CSAT. Ji merely repeated the story that his mother had left home. He prevented his father from going into the main room, without giving an explanation as to why it was sealed. The father reported the situation to the police, and the son confessed his crime to them.
Experts called the case symbolic of extreme pathologies related to education, including the obsessions with first place rankings and grades in South Korean society.
Seoul Neuropsychiatric Clinic Director Seo Cheon-seok said Thursday, “Many people, especially full-time homemakers, believe they can only develop a sense of self by making their children succeed, and this is a structural problem that has given rise to a fixation on making it to the very top in a ‘winner-takes-all’ society.”
Catholic University of Korea Education Professor Sung Ki-sun said, “The situation in many South Korean homes is one where parents project their own unfulfilled desires on their children, regarding them as instruments for vicarious satisfaction, yet they display a distorted form of affection, excusing their actions by saying they do it ‘because we love our child.’”
  
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